Them Too, Now what?

What a sad state of affairs. More and more Gurus are being exposed for being sexually exploitive of their students. Chogyam Trungpa himself has been put forward as doing some horrendous stuff, and his son, the Sakyong, is currently facing a litany of accusations. I say accusations, but they seem credible to me. So I’m just going to say that I’m guessing he did the rapey things of which he is accused. I’m focussing on the Shambhala folks because that’s where I hung out for years, but it’s definitely not limited to them. Yoga gurus, Zen gurus, and more, have been finally revealed as being really pretty awful people.

For years the conversation around Trungpa, specifically, was “can an alcoholic and drug user really be enlightened?”. The general consensus seemed to be “yes”, but mainly because he was so good at doing both. He could keep going with conversations, keep giving talks, etc etc. He was a very functional alcoholic, so people kind of said “well he controls the vice, the vice isn’t controlling him”. With these new revelations, I feel like this point is moot, and the question has moved on to “can a rapist be enlightened?”. Well I, for one, believe enlightenment and rape are mutually exclusive. I know some folks think you can be spiritually mature, and emotionally stunted, but I’m not buying it. As I’ve discussed in earlier posts – I believe enlightenment to be the height of maturity: true adulthood. Grown ups don’t rape. It is the act of a person stuck in toddlerhood, with an added twist of evil.

So what do we do now that we know that these Gurus are not actually enlightened, but instead are kind of academic enlightened people. Maybe it’s a case of Those who can’t do (enlightenment), teach (enlightenment). But does that even make sense? Can someone give instructions on how to attain something that they haven’t themselves attained? Maybe .. maybe they’re just parroting what they’ve heard from other (hopefully enlightened) people, and so are at least passing on knowledge that has some validity. People can speak academically about a lot of topics, with a lot of authority, without ever having had direct experience of those topics. But given that the topic in this case is “being a good person” and they are decidedly not “good people” do their takes on the philosophy even have validity? I feel like that’s a real grey area, with a likely slide down to “no”.

So, I think this all comes down to the fact that we shouldn’t trust anyone but ourselves. Every single individual is wrapped up in their own illusions about themselves, Gurus included. Trungpa said as much. So we can’t necessarily much extract value from their words: they were, at best, kidding themselves that they had authority on this topic. At worst, they were lying hucksters just trying to empire build and gain a following.

But do we need them? After all, we know the goal: to be sane. We don’t need religious instruction to tell us whether we’re there. We probably have a sense of when we’re feeling insane, and when we’re feeling more sane. Maybe we have never felt fully sane. Fine. let’s just stick with those relative values, realising we may never reach that end point. We can likely use the evil guru’s advice on how to meditate (that’s a technical concept, without much subjectivity — any teacher is probably fine), and we can likely check in with a counsellor so we don’t get stuck in our own delusions about our own sanity. We can use empirical assessment, and carry out practices that we can quickly, or over time, observe to make us kinder and more stable people. If something makes you less kind, or less stable, stop doing that thing.

TL;DR: We’ve got to get beyond the guru, because honestly, nobody is perfect. All heroes have feet of clay. They might not all be rapists, but they’re not angels, either. They’re just people and they’re completely fallible, and prone to all the human foibles. They might claim to be “Awakened”, but I’m guessing being Awakened is like being on the wagon – you can fall back off of it, and boy did some of these folks fall hard. So to get sane just do the work: follow the noble truths, follow the 8 fold path, get a counsellor, get enough rest, and exercise and eat well. And be as honest with yourself as you can. And don’t put up with rapists.

Let (A Little) Go

I think that when we consider undertaking a new philosophy or approach, we always jump to the extreme case to see if it will pan out in the long run. If we’re contemplating going keto, we immediately think “but what if I’m at my best friend’s wedding — would I eat the cake??”. If we are pondering lowering out carbon footprint, we think “but if my family member were dying across the continent, would I fly to them?”. And similarly, when we think about becoming Buddhist and letting go of all attachments, we think “so am I meant to not love my children? Am I meant to let go of my parents? Should I not be sad if my cat dies?”

This technique is “optimising for the corner case”: we plan our lives around situations that will barely ever happen, if they even happen at all. We fail to take moderate action, because of fear of what our technique would look like at the extremes. This is a logical fallacy: plan for the typical case. What happens at the edges doesn’t really matter that much in the long run!

So rather than thinking about what letting go of attachment looks like in the extremes, think about what it looks like in the norms. What does letting go look like while driving to work? While making breakfast? While playing with your child? While talking to your spouse? Maybe you need to let go of expectations for your teenager (let go of the expectation that they will be organised, for instance). Maybe you need to let go of your expectations for your ageing parents. Maybe you need to let go of your expectations for yourself! You can’t be perfect. Let go of the image of yourself as a superhero. Just let go of that tiny thing, a million times a day.

The upside here is that letting go of these normal clingings will mean you’re in better emotional shape when the weird situations come up. If you have not been berating your teenager for being airy fairy for the last few months, they may be more present and supportive if your parent dies. If you have not been beating yourself up about not being perfect, you may be more able to handle it if something happens to your child that you need full mental presence to deal with. These micro-clingings (fury at others over not making a light, or getting cut off in the Starbucks line up, or fury at ourselves for forgetting things, or cutting someone else off in traffic (stupid! stupid!)) are exhausting! You need energy to deal with difficulties — but you won’t have it if you’ve clung to tiny injuries.

So let go of the little, normal things. Start local. Don’t worry about the edges – they will work out fine.

Don’t Go It Alone

Buddhism, I believe, is at its heart the search for sanity. The release from neurosis, which is the ultimate cause (and symptom) of dhukka. Feelings are not the enemy: our reactions to our feelings are what turn pain into suffering.

By embarking on the path to sanity, we fall prey to insidious delusion: the notion that we are “really getting somewhere”, when later we look back and realise we were in momentary insanity. We can sometimes convince ourselves that we have gone so far on our spiritual path that we undertake manic actions: we give things away that we later realise we actually needed, we quit a job we actually kind of liked, we take on a task we can’t handle. We write checks that our future selves just can’t cash. We’re operating in a kind of punch drunk mindset.

Chogyam Trungpa put it well, and suggests that what you have really done is re-defined the concept of the dharma to suit your own bent psyche: “you adapted the message of this particular doctrine to your own needs rather than hearing the doctrine as speaking the truth. You are a spokesman for the doctrine for your own sake; therefore you have manufactured the truth of the doctrine.” (this is from Cynicism and Warmth from The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa, Volume Three)

Myopia and self-reference is anathema to progress. What Trungpa is saying is that you need someone to call you on your shit. We come to Buddhism because we’re a little crazy. We are worried that we see the world wrong, and we are right about that! But because our vision is clouded, we need someone outside our own heads to give us perspective. You need someone to say “Okay – so you feel enlightened today – now try getting stuck in traffic/going home for Thanksgiving/… What comes up for you? Let’s work through that!”. In the past, these people were Buddhist Gurus. They had the market on self-discovery cornered. But just like physics has migrated from the realm of philosophy into the realm of science, the quest for sanity, and understanding of the mind, has tracked a path from spiritual Guru to Therapist. The quest for enlightenment is more a search for mental clarity than spiritual magic. Most of us don’t expect the end-point of enlightenment to be suddenly seeing auras or more dimensions. We expect that we will be able to see situations without wrapping them in our own insanity and bias. That our own neurotic/psychotic needs won’t eclipse our sense of reason. This is what therapists are for.

Therapists can help you walk the 8 fold path. Therapists have direct tools, validated (I believe) by science, to address the “inner critic” — the voice in your head that tells you you’re terrible at everything (right thought); to help you identify your own delusions (right view, right understanding); to help you find your authentic purpose (right livelihood); to help you keep your actions and reactions authentic and not harmful (right speech, right action). Therapists can give you activities and exercises to do that will sure up your muscles of self inquiry and self control (right effort, right mindfulness).

Meditation is a key component: it will let you hear that your inner voice more clearly, and distance yourself from it so you can remedy the situation, it will let you watch your actions rise up, so you can pause before you cause harm, and it will teach you the superpower of calming yourself in times of stress.

But you need someone to shepherd you through the process of working with your mind. You cannot blindly lead yourself. You can’t get sane just by reading self-help books, and you can’t attain enlightened sanity just by staying in your own head. Or maybe you can, but it will certainly take longer.

Maybe a Buddhist Guru is what you need – but those are hard to find, and tend to have a lot of foibles. Therapists are everywhere, and many are rooted in mindfulness and will exploit meditation practice as a mechanism for self-inquiry and ultimately sanity.

So don’t go it alone. You need someone whose opinions you trust, who is outside your own mind, helping you along the way.

Steady Yourself

Moment to moment, how do we progress in the path towards growing up, towards being enlightened? Deepak Chopra, and most of the other Buddhist(ish) teachers suggest that “Present moment awareness” is a method for bringing enlightenment practice into every day life. Not saving meditation for special sitting occasions, when the stars have aligned, and you’re perched on a cushion in front of your special shrine. Instead, blend it into your mundane activities. Stay here, and now. But what are the possible mechanics of this?

This brings me to thinking about the times when present moment awareness would be brought into use. The examples are typically “while washing dishes”, or “while walking”. I find the intensity of focus almost strangely distracting while washing dishes. If I’m too connected to “the oneness” (as Lama Surya Das sarcastically put it), I’m actually not going to do a great job of navigating the sidewalk. Meditation, paradoxically, can be distracting! I know that means I’m doing it wrong — but what would it mean to do it right?

All the statues of the buddha have one thing in common – they are all balanced. They are sitting squarely. They look like human paper weights. The Zen teachers, and most of the meditation instructors, indicate that finding a proper seated posture is paramount in making progress in sitting meditation. You must become a human paper weight too!

But what is it you’re doing when you sit like that? What does it matter?

They key is that balance. Stoking the sense of balance. And also the sense of where you are in the space. The 6th and 7th senses: Proprioception (awareness of body in space) and Balance.

Sometimes my thoughts are so powerful I’ll feel almost pulled off the meditation cushion. By maintaining a sense of balance and place, I can recenter myself. I can feel where down is. It’s easier to do, the better the balance I have on the cushion. If I’m tipping because I’m uncomfortable, it’s actually harder to maintain the awareness of balance and space. When thoughts tug you off balance, rebalance again. Watch the tugging sensation from a balanced pose. Don’t let it drag you over. Chogyam Trungpa’s meditation instruction (whatever we may now feel about him as a teacher) was to focus slightly more on the out breath. I think he’s in good company with meditation instructors on that point. It’s in the out breath when we can really feel that downness. We can feel our body relax, and succumb to gravity a little bit. Up is a bit of an airy concept (ha!), but down is unambiguous. So: by exhaling and turning attention to that exhalation, we connect not with which way is up, but which way is down. We ground ourselves in here, and in now.

Balance can be regained moment to moment. This is how we bring our practice into every experience: Before washing dishes, make sure you’re squared up, centered on your task. Don’t wash dishes at an awkward angle (you’ll break one!). When you’re walking down stairs, feel yourself landing on each one. Don’t lunge forward. Notice if you’re leaning weirdly (I often am!). Sometimes the lunging and leaning is very subtle — my head is very slightly forced forward, with my forehead tensed up. Or I feel tension behind my eyes that I am moving into. I can gently ease that awareness back, into the portion of my head that sits on top of my neck, which then sits on my shoulders and hips. And if I’m standing, then sits on my heels, which are on the ground. By rebalancing in every action, we bring ourselves back down to ground, which has a natural effect of bringing us into now.

Balance as a proxy for sanity makes sense: Being unbalanced is the term we use for someone who is displaying insane traits. Feeling off kilter means we are not feeling like we’re stable, and suggests a feeling of derangement and momentary craziness. Dizziness (a loss of sense of balance) is directly related to anxiety: one causes the other, and vice versa!

Regaining balance only takes an instant, but it has profound effect. It improves the efficacy of every action, and takes the anxiety out of every interaction. If you can’t act with balance, don’t act. Rebalance first. Breathe until you regain the feeling of down. This is the act of an independently standing person. A real grown up.

Just Grow Up

The more I read about Buddhism, and the words of the Buddha, and the concept of enlightenment, the more convinced I am:

Enlightenment is being a total grown up.

In his essay “What is Enlightenment”, Kant said:

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] “Have courage to use your own understanding!”—that is the motto of enlightenment.
http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/idehist-enlighten-kant02.htm

He’s saying that we need to stop being immature, and stop abdicating to a god, or to a religion, or to a parent, or to a king, or to another, to do our thinking for us. We need to use our own reason and perspective and assess the world and our actions in context. We need to stop believing in magic. We act like children, waiting for others to pick up our messes. This is because it’s tremendously convenient. But it’s a false economy. At some point that pyramid scheme runs out of levels. We have to clean up our own messes. We have to make our own decisions. We have to make heat and boil our own water — no amount of divine intervention will boil it for us. We have to be a real adult, without waiting for parental supervision or rescue; to accept responsibility: that is enlightenment.

The Buddhist view exactly harmonises with this. It’s about seeing reality as it is, without childish delusions and desires. It’s about getting over yourself, and not giving in to self-indulgence, or being a slave to self-consciousness. It’s about not having a myopic view of the effects of your actions (“someone will clean up the ocean — I’ll just throw this one bottle into it”). It’s about not behaving like an asshole just because you feel like it, and thereby ruining someone else’s day, and causing regressions in others.

The Law of Karma: Your actions have consequences. Nothing happens magically.

The 4 noble truths:

Life is difficult
You make it worse with childish craving and neuroticism
Grow up and stop your self-indulgent craving, then you will be able to handle life
Here’s what being a grown up looks like (8 Fold Path: Right view, Right intention, Right speech, Right action, Right livelihood, Right effort, Right mindfulness, Right concentration)

Non-attachment: This doesn’t mean non-attachment to everything. You have to attach to tasks to get them done. Be practical! Buddhist non-attachment means non-attachment to your own childish egotistical needs and expectations. “BUT I WANTED THE RED CAR!”: Childish! Throwing rubbish on the ground expecting someone else to clean it: Childish! Being jealous when you don’t accomplish something, and somebody else did, even though they tried harder: Childish! Not taking your work seriously: Childish!!! Stop being attached to your childish nature. (Note: childlike is different: that’s lovely and playful. Childlike wonder: absolutely. Childish tantrum: absolutely not.)

Meditation is practicing letting go of those expectations and self-conscious ramblings. Yes, they come, bla bla bla bla bla, but who cares. Just let them come and go. Don’t make them a thing. Be a grown up about it. Keep paying attention to the boring candle or your boring breath. Yes you’d rather be doing something else, so what. Stop whining. You’re doing this. For some number of minutes. Be a grown up about it. Sit up straight; don’t slouch. Act like a professional in your own life. Meditation is the equivalent of the bench press for concentration and letting go. It’s harder than what you’ll need to do in regular life, but it is done in a safe spot, and it strengthens you so you’ll be able to be a grown up in the messier rest of the time.

And the Buddha was right: We *all* have the capacity to do this. We can *all* whittle away at our childish drama and become grown ups. We can all look at a difficult situation and think “what are my options” instead of “WHY MEEEEE??????”. We can all do this. This is inside of us. The grown up is living in there, covered up by layers and layers of childish shit. Chogyam Trungpa called this the Cocoon. Get rid of the shit! Emerge from the cocoon! Reveal your inner grown up!

(PS: So true true true, some people have more severe mental illness, and have a totally non-trivial time releasing neuroticism (can they even, without medication!) I’m not talking about these people, because I’m not a psychiatrist, or a psychologist. I’m discussing the average case. That said, I’d hope that doing some kind of mindfulness practice (not necessarily concentration meditation – there are lots of meditative-style practices that help you get over yourself) would help. The internets suggests this is the situation.)

Brain Worms

Yesterday I ran into a woman who I hadn’t seen in a couple of weeks. I knew she was nearing the end of her pregnancy, so seeing her out and about I just assumed she hadn’t had the baby (after I had my kids, I didn’t leave bed for like a month). So I said “Still waiting! Hang in there!”, and she said ……

“I’ve had the baby!”

So that was good: I had clearly called a non-pregnant woman pregnant. She slightly rolled her eyes. It wasn’t a good moment.

I tried to cover it up with “well you look amazing, but I just assumed, because how is it you’re up and about” etc etc bla bla bla bla bla terrible terrible. To make matters worse, I did a whole look up and down thing (I think I was trying to gesture “you’re standing up though!”, but I don’t think it came out like that) and said “WHAT???”.

And now of course I just can’t stop cringing about it. I was driving and felt myself slightly lose control of the wheel as I thought “shit how on earth did I do that?”. This morning, I was slightly more annoyed with my kids faffing because the image of her disgusted expression keeps playing in front of my eyes. And my mind keeps trying to psychically rework the incident. “No you didn’t really say that, let’s try replaying that again, so that it comes out better”. But to no avail.

So now this brain worm is wiggling its way into everything. I find myself reaching for my phone so I can scroll the internet endlessly to try to wrench my mind off it.

From experience I know these brain worms can last from minutes to years. I have one from literally two decades ago that only just released because the person who was involved in that incident has recently died!

Part of me thinks that the rumination is a mechanism for learning from the experience, but in most of these cases, there’s almost nothing to learn other than “don’t be a social moron”. Everybody makes mistakes! You can’t go through life walking on egg shells! I would have to basically never speak again! And I could apologise, but would that actually help? Would it make things worse? Is there a way I can resolve to do better? If anything, I don’t think the brain worm itself is actually teaching me anything. If I really want to learn from the shitty experience, I should probably sit down with a piece of paper, make a mind map, figure out what the risk factors are, and what the options are in the moment. Hitting rewind-replay in a loop, and punishing myself with each iteration, is not the answer.

Brain worms strike me as the definition of insanity. A thought that has taken on a life of its own, and that is hell bent on pulling you away from the current moment. It won’t let you enjoy your coffee; it won’t let you think about brushing your teeth; it won’t let you just get on with your work. It screams in your head, and goes so far as to produce an actual physical response!

I guess the Buddhists would say to use the brain worm as a teacher. Say “hello cringey thought!” and just feel the panic and horror it induces, but not hold onto it. Let it go. Come back to the breath. Come back to the body. Don’t cultivate the brain worm. Just let it worm if it likes but don’t stroke it or stoke it.

I’ll try that.

Sadness is not Suffering

When I first started thinking about Buddhism, around 30 years ago, I was intrigued by the idea of a release from suffering. It sounded so incredible! Suffering is the worst! I imagined all the teenage feelings I was having (rejection, jealousy, self-consciousness) just vanishing, and tried to picture what it would be like not to have an emotional reaction to the loss of a pet, or even the loss of a parent. A life free of sadness!

This concerned me a bit: if you have a life free of sadness, surely happiness goes too. Can you really have one without the other? Does bliss have meaning without misery? This seeming contradiction made me doubt the whole buddhist enterprise a little. That wasn’t the only thing that made me doubt (reincarnation is unpalatable for an atheist) but it was a biggie. How could you build a belief construct around dispensing with emotion! Are we to become Vulcans? And lots of them weren’t particularly nice!

But after reading and reading and listening and listening, I think the suffering the Buddhists are talking about isn’t the emotional response to loss. I don’t think they’re talking about sadness or grief. I think they’re talking about neurosis:

Such a viewpoint does not quite mean “getting rid” of problems, but rather shifting one’s focus. Problems are seen in a much broader context of health: one begins to let go of clinging to one’s neuroses and to step beyond obsession and identification with them. The emphasis is no longer on the problems themselves but rather on the ground of experience through realizing the nature of mind itself. When problems are seen in this way, then there is less panic and everything seems more workable. When problems arise, instead of being seen as purely threats, they become learning situations, opportunities to find out more about one’s own mind, and to continue on one’s journey. (Chogyam Trungpa, The Sanity we are Born With)

Sadness is a natural part of the human condition. We can’t get rid of sadness. We shouldn’t try to become blissed out idiots. That’s as much of a delusion as anything else. The Buddhist promise is that by meditating, by being able to tame your own mind, you won’t have a neurotic reaction to that sadness. You won’t be so driven insane with grief that your cat died that you insult someone at the store. Likewise, we all need to feel joy in our lives, but we shouldn’t be so caught up in glee that we lord our achievements over others for a sneaky neurotic sense of superiority.

So sadness stays, even if suffering goes.

UnCosmic Karma

So what’s the deal with Karma, if all of Buddhism is just “don’t freak out“? (Note: I don’t believe I really have the secret to this — this is the continuation of a thought exercise).

Karma seems like it’s pretty cosmic — the idea that you can do good things, and then good things come back to you. It sounds mystical.

But I think it’s more boring than that. I think really accepting Karma is just accepting — truly accepting — that there is actually no magic in the world. That each thing you do, has an effect. And everything that’s done, has a cause. There’s nothing magical that “just happens”. Nothing other worldly is managing anything. There is just doing, and having effects. Cause; Effect. That’s it.

That’s the boring realisation of Karma. It’s not exciting at all.

So why does it get associated with better things happening to you, if you do good things? I think perhaps, originally, this made sense if you consider the state of the world on aggregate. If everyone does better things (produce less waste, speak more kindly to one another, etc) then the world will, on balance be a more positive place, and you will experience a more positive life. And it makes sense that if people, say, in a neighbourhood, were more positive to one another, less wasteful, etc, then the feeling of life in that neighbourhood would feel more positive. And maybe it would feel like you doing good things made good things happen to you. But no: Nobody is keeping score about how much good you, specifically, did.

But the recognition that one thing leads to another, with no magic in between, is important for recognising the reality of the world. And just facing it, in its boring truth. It’s once again about basic sanity.

Non-attachment

One of the basic principles of Buddhism is non-attachment. It goes with the concept of impermanence.

Living with a toddler really helps me get a handle on attachment. My son got a sticker, and put it on his hand. Later he realised the sticker was gone. He wailed! Like he was being murdered! “MY SPIDERMAN STICKER!”. And then when I tried to hug him, he bit me!

I get that. I do that all the time. Maybe not the biting, part … at least not literally.

But I guess a more mature, non toddler approach, is noticing the sticker is gone, and realising that stickers don’t stick around (ha!) for that long. They’re impermanent. Let them go.

Going back to the basic rule (Don’t Freak Out), helps here. You lose your sticker: don’t freak out. You get to be sad. You might have really liked that sticker. Maybe you make a plan to get a similar sticker if you have the chance. But you don’t freak out about it.

Same goes with life and death. Definitely sad to be dying, or to have someone die. Losing your mind about it is likely a natural reaction to someone dying. I’m pretty far from being able to not lose my mind if someone near me dies. But maybe that’s what meditation practice is all about: getting you to a place where you can not freak out, lose your mind, shit all over people, cause an emotional train wreck, be emotionally (or physically!) violent in reaction, even when you’re faced with being detached from someone you really care about.